Spazi del culto della Nuova Pompei. Istanze di conservazione e prospettive di valorizzazione

The religious aspects widely influenced the historic development of New Pompeii’s City, as well as the cultural background of this community, such as historically produced. Besides the Sanctuary of Mary - the building process of which has been already well-investigated and known, still within its cultural consequences - the study aims to report and analyse architectural features and current physical and constructive conditions of the rest of the churches in New Pompeii, to consequently qualify approaches and operational means for their preserving and enhancing, within an integrated cultural fruition system of the urban district, in which all its attraction factors are mutually involved, even if only potential, such as the “scattered” archaeological heritage, mostly ignored, the contemporary architectonical productions, often dismissed, and the rural and natural heritage presently are. Because appropriate architectonical inventories still have lacked, the survey starts from a preliminary combing of the city to localise the ecclesiastical heritage, especially churches, qualifying the main features (figuration and construction) of this repertoire, actual and historical one, while expressing a qualitative assessment of each fabric state of conditions. Thus, the process comes to selecting the temples, basing on cultural significance and accessibility conditions of each one, as to submit the chosen examples to the consequent cataloguing phase of the investigation. The cataloguing form must be devoted to the reconnaissance and the preservation of the heritage involved at the same time. Therefore, it consists of the punctual recognition of fabrics constructive, physical and figurative features, within an appropriate checking of each state of conditions correspondently to every data category, such that protection, restoration and enhancement practices can be appropriately designed, even if on a large scale of implementation. As a consequence, the cataloguing profile has been defined to answer the indicated requests, using data on this heritage peculiarities and vulnerabilities, such as emerged from the pre-cataloguing stage of the research. The selected churches in New Pompeii have been punctually investigated through indirect and direct analysis approaches, according to the understanding process on which adequate heritage preservation methodologies found. The cataloguing form surveys the building “registry” data (spatial, typological, distributive, functional, constructional, physical and structural features), even stratigraphically ascertained and verified, also connecting each relevant technical behaviours (functional, distributive and structural ones) of the fabrics investigated to the pertinent degradation phenomena and static damages. Thus, the study achieves the preliminary programming of preservation, restoration, maintenance and enhancement practices precisely targeted to this heritage, also revealing generalised lacks and fragilities of the current management of the urban cultural repertoire.